Ubuntu

This guide is for users who are running Ubuntu versions 16.04, 16.10, 17.04, or the latest 17.10. There have been a large number of bug reports concerning wifi connectivity issues in these releases. If any of the following sounds familiar, read on for potential fixes. Ubuntu will not connect to wifi at all. …

Ubuntu now allows you to use the snap command to install apps from a store. While it’s not designed to replace the Debian-derived apt-get system currently in use on most Ubuntu Linux installations, it does have the benefit of being fairly platform-agnostic. This is why it’s become popular on Ubuntu …

If you’ve been removing a bunch of packages, then you might have accidentally removed something like lightdm. This package allows you to log into your graphical desktop, and in many cases will automatically take you to it. Upon removal and reboot of the machine, you’ll probably just find a blank …

If you’re using Ubuntu Linux or perhaps a derivative like Kubuntu or Ubuntu MATE, then you might receive a dialog message that reads “The volume “boot” has only 0 bytes disk space remaining.” When Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu or any other derivative attempts to update, it tries to install new kernel …

In many cases, PDF files themselves have replaced printing. However, it’s still extremely useful to print these in a wide variety of situations. You won’t have to use the command line at all either, which might disappoint some but excite others. While there are command line tools for printing PDF …

If you’re having trouble enabling spell checking in LibreOffice or Abiword and you’re using one of the *buntu Linux distributions or a comparable Debian-based version, then you might not have any languages installed on your system. In most cases, the distribution installed these automatically, but you might have accidentally removed …

Ubuntu users looking for a lightweight tabbed PDF viewer have long turned to qpdfview, but it’s always been difficult to install it. People either needed to use a special PPA repository or download the source code themselves to build it. Either of these methods was unnecessarily complicated for many people, …

When you push the physical power button in Ubuntu or its derivatives, it will generally prompt you to select an option and thus allow you to either shut the system down or simply suspend it. This isn’t expected behavior for many people used to pushing the physical power button and …

Whether you’ve finally decided to make the jump to a pure Linux environment or you’re revitalizing a laptop with a damaged install of Windows 7, you can completely remove everything currently installed on the drive and replace it with the new operating system. Most Ubuntu installation instructions focus primarily on …

Users looking to install Ubuntu 16 and higher without any X11 server or graphical user interface of any kind often turn to the minimal ISO, but it requires an Internet connection to install. While it’s possible to use this to open immediately up to a CLI login screen at a …

Debates over whether or not to use systemd are perhaps the only thing hotter in the GNU/Linux world than the on-going debate over vi and emacs. No one can tell you whether you personally want to use systemd or not, but fortunately you currently have the choice as far as …

While it’s possible to run wget in the background using an ampersand after issuing a command, it’s generally more useful to issue the command with the -b flag. For instance, let’s assume you wanted to download a Debian CD install image. You could do so with wget -b http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-cd/debian-8.7.1-i386-lxde-CD-1.iso, which …

Users often install both Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu or another *buntu implementation side by side on separate partitions in a single boot device. While Microsoft plans to continue supporting Windows 7 for several more years, Microsoft is slowly phasing it out in favor of Windows 10. You may have received …

Ubuntu Server is technically designed as a CLI prompt only operating system for use with large big iron servers, but there’s no reason it can’t work in routers and embedded systems that manage Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet as well. It’s assumed that a project like this needs either a small …

When you try to watch Amazon Prime videos while using Mozilla Firefox on Linux, you might end up getting a Digital Rights error message. You may be told that your web browser is missing a digital rights component, and it will then provide you with some information about a Widevine …

One of the errors Linux users dread more than any other reads something like error: hd0 out of disk. Press any key to continue… at boot time. This error makes it seem as though your boot volume is physically not present in your system. While this does indicate that there …

In a manner of speaking, all file system inconsistencies are unexpected. No one actually wants to go out and find that their file structure is damaged in some way. However, the term “unexpected inconsistency” will sometimes actually show up as a specific type of error message. Since this error message …

Linux installation programs, including those used to install Ubuntu and its various derivatives, have a tendency to create many partitions. Some users install multiple versions of the operating system on a single physical disk, which creates multiple volumes that partition their drive so much that it looks like it’s sliced …

Sometimes opening a storage volume’s properties sheet will force part of the resulting dialog box off the screen. Occasionally you’ll accidentally move any type of application or browser window off the screen in the same fashion. It might end up on an alternate desktop, or even get pushed over the …

Certain special hardware configurations require a few special commands to run whenever you start Xubuntu, and it’s easy to automate these. Generally, these should work regardless of how you run them. Unfortunately, there are some situations where you might find that it works fine if you run them individually but …

While it shouldn’t happen when using the official apt-get repositories, if you download software off the Internet and run it then there’s a chance that you’ll see the dreaded bash: ./nameOfProgram: cannot execute binary file: Exec format error. This error, which is usually followed by bash: ./nameOfProgram.sh: Permission denied or …

Installing the hardened version of Tor in the Ubuntu terminal is actually much faster and easier than installing the sand boxed version and it requires far fewer steps. These steps are identical regardless of which version of Ubuntu you might be using. Any of the official spins like Kubuntu, Xubuntu …

Occasionally, you might try to run the Software Updater program on an Ubuntu machine, only to find that you get a “Failed to download repository information” message. It might remind you to check your Internet connection. If you were instead attempting to use the terminal to update Ubuntu, then you …

If you’ve accidentally added a user to the admin group or any of the other groups on a multiple user system in Ubuntu, then deleting them from it without loosing their account is actually fairly easy. The problem comes from how easy it is to delete the actual user in …

Sometimes when you try to extract a .tar.gz, .tar.xz, .tar.bz2 or even a regular zip file, you will find that you get an error such as xz: (stdin): File format not recognized that indicates that the operating system can’t extract it. Ubuntu, and other Debian-derived distributions of Linux, provide a …